Helen Mirren to Play Nazi-Stolen Art Recoverer in The Woman in Gold

In "The Woman in Gold﻿," Mirren will play real-life heroine Maria Altmann, a Jewish survivor of WWII, who fought the Austrian government to get back several paintings by Gustav Klimt that were pilfered from her family during wartime.

Just last month, we called attention to the erasure of women that George Clooney commits in his historical romp The Monuments Men, which follows (pretty much only) the men who endeavored to recoup the millions of artworks plundered by the Nazis.

Helen Mirren will now offer a female take on the decades-long process of postwar art recovery. In The Woman in Gold, Mirren will play real-life heroine Maria Altmann, a Jewish survivor of WWII, who fought the Austrian government to get back several paintings by Gustav Klimt that were pilfered from her family during wartime.

Altmann's story has already been recounted in three documentaries: Stealing Klimt, Adele's Wish, and The Rape of Europa.

Watch a short video of Altmann talking about her the strange and turbulent life of Klimt's iconic The Lady in Gold, the most famous of the paintings she attempted to recoup, which happens to be a portrait of her aunt(!):